


Watch how easily I unravel at the seams

by rapono



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Eldritch Benrey, Emotional Instability, Gen, Monster Benrey, Not a game, Scars, Unwilling Transformation, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:09:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25998799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rapono/pseuds/rapono
Summary: Gordon was finally starting to find peace in his life, a good long few months after the incident at Black Mesa. He still had contact with the science team, and hadn't seen a spec of alien life, finally starting to settle back into normalcy. Until one night, a familiar monster shows up in his home, and starts to fall apart infront of him, literally.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 159





	Watch how easily I unravel at the seams

**Author's Note:**

> I've been rapidly devouring hlvrai fanfics ever since I finished watching the series (I have like 70+ tabs of these fanfics open on my phone currently). I wanted to make a fanfic of my own, but couldn't decide on a concept I liked enough until now. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Tw: descriptions of graphic body horror and bloody injuries are present in this fic. If this stuff makes you squeamish, I'd recommend not reading this. 
> 
> Beta read by [junee_bee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/junee_bee/pseuds/junee_bee) and "Tommy's hat"

Gordon was tired. Sure, he loved the science team dearly, but sometimes they had the energy of a toddler, sometimes even rivaling Joshua. So as great as their night out had been, it had left Gordon feeling exhausted.

It had been a good few months since his escape from black mesa, since he survived death, since he defeated Benrey, since he lost and regained his right hand. It still felt numb sometimes, like those fingers weren’t his. It didn’t help when he’d wake up screaming from a vivid nightmare, and couldn’t feel his hand.

But despite the lasting trauma, he'd been recovering. The “hush money" G-man had given him (along with his new hand) meant he didn’t have to stress about finding a new job for a long time, at least if he spent it wisely. He'd managed to convince his mother that no, he had not decided to abandon Joshua with her, but an incident at work had left him injured and out of commission for awhile. She seemed to buy it enough, enough that she knew he still cared deeply about Joshua, no matter what the real answer was. That kid was the light of his life.

This last month however, something had felt off. Sometimes when he was alone at home, Joshua away at school, he would get hit with a sickening sense of foreboding. Like something was wrong, like something terrible was going to happen. 

Thusly he found himself hanging out with the science team more often. After all, they had forged an unbreakable bond during the events at Black Mesa. Being with others, or just outside the house, made him feel better. Plus, he knew whatever threat could possibly rear its ugly head, stood no chance with them by his side.

Eventually, Gordon grew to ignore it. Perhaps it was just a mix of trauma and loneliness.

He checked his phone. Babysitter had tucked Joshua into bed without much fuss, and after assuring he was asleep, had headed home to finish a school project. That was okay, Gordon wasn’t far from home, Joshua could handle sleeping alone in the house for a few minutes. He assured them it was okay and would get them their pay sometime tomorrow. At least now all he had to do was brush his teeth before crashing.

As he strolled up to his door, fishing his keys from his pocket, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of unease roll around in his stomach. He stopped in his tracks, glancing around. 

Why? Why did he feel uneasy? He didn’t see anything off? There was no reason to feel uneasy. Was he just feeling paranoid?

Gordon sighed and shrugged it off. The paranoia must've been acting up again, although it was weird he felt it outside of his home, while Joshua was home. Probably nothing though, likely just his exhaustion getting to him.

He broke out of his weird daze and continued to his door, inserting the key and unlocking it without a fuss.

When he opened the door however, he knew something was off. The feeling in his gut returned full swing, as his eyes began to search the darkness of his home. Objects had been moved, of course, as Joshua and the sitter had been doing things whole he was gone. A stray plate on the table, the tv remote on the counter top. Gordon took a few cautious steps inside, the floor creaking beneath him.

And then he saw it, a humanoid figure in the darkness. At first he thought maybe the babysitter hadn’t actually left yet, or maybe Joshua had woken up. 

Wait no, that couldn’t be Joshy. The person was too big, too tall. Shit, did someone break into his home?

The figure turned around, glowing eyes meeting his own normal ones, and Gordon’s stomach dropped.

“Benrey.”

He dropped his keys in surprise, the guard's usual bored expression quickly changing to shock as his name was spoken, the clanking of metal on the floor seeming to spook him too. Benrey looked as surprised as Gordon was to see him, as if he somehow hadn’t expected to see the scientist in his own home.

“uh…” The guard opened his mouth several times, his animalistic teeth glinting in the glow of his eyes, but no words came out. It left Gordon feeling a little more confused than pissed. The guard easily spat out bullshit all the time, why did it seem so hard for him now?

“Benrey?”

He approached him, cautiously, like a wild animal (although sometimes it felt like he really was one). It was then he noticed something was off about Benrey’s silhouette, he couldn’t pinpoint what exactly, but he knew with certainly that something wasn’t right.

The room suddenly, somehow, got darker. Gordon froze, glancing around in confusion, before putting his gaze back on Benrey.

“g… gh...” Benrey’s body shuddered with a chilling wrongness. “g… goR _don_ …” 

Gordon watched in horror as the skin on Benrey’s face began to peel, the flesh beneath expanding beyond his body into a writhing mass of eyes and teeth that began to fill the darkness, growing all around him. Benrey shivered, and for a moment, his skin and flesh tried to glue itself back together, but the effort seemed too late. Fearful eyes met fearful eyes, before the guard's face split apart and got lost in the fleshy expanse.

His body continued to unravel and contort, bones growing and breaking the bounds of their fleshy prison, making a sickening sound as they broke and rebuilt themselves over and over again, forming into a random assortment of human and animal and creatures beyond, eyes and teeth growing along the seams like a mold in a time lapse.

And then, every monstrous and human and inhuman eye locked on Gordon Freeman, frozen in the presence of an ever expanding eldritch horror formerly shaped as an annoying security guard. He’d almost forgotten he was in the room, his poor human mind struggling to comprehend the mass before him, body trembling and heart pounding. He hadn’t even heard his own heart over the sounds of a body breaking and reforming.

He couldn’t move. He was stuck, petrified under the thousands and ever growing number of eyes watching him, as if he'd met medusa’s gaze. 

A mouth in the mass opened, a deer's skull, teeth all wrong, and eyes pouring from its sockets.

“feE **T _MAN_**.”

It sounded like hundreds of people screaming the words in agony all slightly out of sync, but just enough to be comprehensible. 

And with those words, Gordon finally found himself able to tear his gaze away from the thousands watching him, and bolted out the door.

Feet pounding on the pavement, Gordon didn’t even look behind him as he tore down the street, legs moving as fast as he could make them, ignoring the ache from his lack of fitness. Why, why hadn’t he tried to stay in shape?

He wasn't sure where he was heading, or if Benrey was still chasing him. Was he? Or had the bastard simply just been trying to bar him from entering his own household?

For better or for worse, Gordon gave into his curiosity and glanced behind him.

There was a giant ever changing mass behind him, eeriely silent, with various animal heads popping out the front, breaking and changing, and melting back into the main mass. Benrey was following.

Gordon felt bile rise in the back of his throat as he turned back to look for any sort of hiding place, Something, anything that could possibly help him get the lovecraftian beast off his tail. He didn’t want to die, not after making it so far, not after finally finding peace in his life.

The streets and homes were too neat and clean, no little crevice to hide away in that couldn’t easily be discovered. He could hear Benrey getting closer, a sickening creaking of both wood and bones slowly getting louder, faster, somewhere behind him. He didn’t want to know how close, how close he was to death.

Where could he hide!?

As Gordon scanned the area, he spotted a mass of trees behind a house, and it clicked. The park! He had almost forgotten about the nearby patch of nature. There certainly had to be somewhere in there where could slip away, in a ditch, behind a tree, beneath a bush. 

Gordon quickly spotted one of the entrances to the said park, beelining for it as he heard something wet and slimy splatter onto the ground not far behind him. He resisted the urge to look. 

He quickly broke away from the marked out path, darting between the trees as he heard one fall nearby, eyes searching for a little alcove to slip away into, something Benrey and his increasing count of eyes wouldn't see. 

A good sized blackberry bush presented itself to him. He grimaced. He didn’t want to shred himself on the thorns, but he was running out of options. At least it would be better than whatever Benrey had planned for him.

So bracing himself for the pain, Gordon glanced behind him to make sure Benrey’s eyes weren’t in his line of sight, and dove in.

Gordon held back a scream as his skin was shredded in multiple places at once. He’d thankfully made sure to cover his face with his hands when he dove in, but the rest of him wasn’t so lucky. His clothes would likely be unusable after this, torn apart with countless bloodstains.

Once he hit the bottom, Gordon curled into a ball and went still, hands still covering his face and he bit back a whimper. He couldn’t see Benrey, but he could still hear the awful organic wet noises and creaking. He did his best to stop his shaking and silence his breathing, praying to whatever God or entity that could hear him, that Benrey wouldn’t find him.

The sounds continued above and around him, as warm silent tears tickled down his covered face.

“ **FE** E _T ** ~~M~~ A**_ **N!!** ”

The discordance of voices screamed his name once more, from somewhere above. The sound make bones vibrate and hair stand on end.

The creaking sound increased, this time a little farther away. 

Benrey had called out for him, which meant Benrey didn’t know where he was.

Gordon felt the trembling in his body slowly disappate at this realization, but he still remained motionless. He needed to make sure He could get away, that Benrey was far enough for him to untangle himself without notice. So he waited. Couldn’t hear the creaking anymore. Another tree fell in the distance.

Gordon counted to one hundred before he finally let himself move. Cautiously, he stood up within the berry bush, hissing and wincing in pain from the countless cuts across his body. He looked around.

The was a shadow in the distance, deeper into the thick of the woods. Benrey was still searching for him, and Gordon had slipped away unnoticed.

Carefully freeing himself from his thorny prison, Gordon began to hobble back home, hoping none his neighbors would see his bloody form. He looked like the final girl at the end of a horror movie. 

Finally, eventually, he made it back to his home, door still wide open, keys still on the floor. Everything was exactly as it had been, minus the eldrich entity. So picking up his fallen keys, he locked the door behind him, and then slumped against it, sobbing.

Benrey was back, and Benrey wanted him dead. He could never be free, he wouldn’t be able to escape forever. Benrey already knew where he lived.

As Gordon broke into quiet sobs, a sickening realisation struck him, one that filled him with more dread and horror than the possibility of losing his own life.

Joshua.

Gordon scrambled to his feet as he ran for his son's bedroom. What if Benrey had hurt Joshua, killed him, ate him? The guard had been in his house before Gordon and after the sitter, so he’d been free to do what he pleased with the kid.

Gordon threw open the bedroom door, bracing himself for the worst.

Joshua was fast asleep, seemingly unbothered and untouched. Gordon rushed to his side, making sure he was breathing. He was, chest slowly falling and rising, no unrest or discomfort in his soft little face. Gordon let out a quiet sigh of relief, almost letting out a choked sob instead.

Benrey hadn't hurt Joshua. His son was okay.

He wasn’t sure if this was because Gordon had arrived home before the monster could do anything to him, or if he hadn’t even bothered to mess with his child yet, but regardless of whichever the answer was, he was thankful. 

So still covered in his own blood and not wanting to wake up and frighten his son, Gordon tiptoed out of Joshua’s bedroom, quietly closing the door behind him. 

Relief still flooding over him, he headed straight for the shower, tossing his clothes in the garbage as he undressed. There was no point attempting to salvage them, they were beyond reasonable repair. 

The warm water stung as it also soothed his aching body, Gordon struggling to stay on his feet. He’d already been worn out earlier today, but now he was doubly, more so triple times the amount he was before. He wanted nothing more than to simply lie down and pass out, but giving into the urge now wasn't worth the risk of his cuts getting an infection.

Thankfully most of them weren't deeper than a cat's scratch or paper cut, with no need for bandaging as long as they were left alone. A few however had cut deep, a nasty gouge of the back of the hand being one of them, the wound still bleeding quite a bit. He wouldn't be surprised if it scarred, making a nice addition to the seam between his new and old flesh, another reminder that he'd survived Benrey’s wrath.

Eventually, Gordon willed himself out of the blissfully warm water, and got to work treating the worst of his wounds. He was lucky he’d stocked up his medical supplies to make up for all the cuts and bumps Joshua had gotten as an excitable young child. He didn’t care if he had the cast from toy story plastered all over his body if it meant they did the job.

Once he was sufficiently patched up, Gordon trudged through the rest of his bedtime tasks before finally heading to bed, just on the cusp of consciousness.

As Gordon plugged his phone into the charger, he realized something important. He needed to let the science team know, know about the danger that had reared its ugly head. So squinting at the screen, Gordon opened up the group chat, and typed something up.

_Benrey is back._

He pressed send and clicked the power button. He didn’t feel like elaborating further or waiting for a response right now, that was a job for morning Gordon. Right now, he just wanted to pass out.

With nothing else holding him back, Gordon collapsed onto his bed, his consciousness quickly falling victim to the soft mattress, dragging him down into blissful sleep.

His last thought before he fully submitted to unconsciousness was a question, one he had hadn’t considered until just this moment.

Why, instead of cracking a joke or simply mocking him, had Benrey just fallen apart at the seams?

**Author's Note:**

> Might turn this into a multi-chapter thing, depending on if I find the motivation/inspiration to do so. Not sure yet.  
>   
> Feel free to bother me at [rapono-writes-things](https://rapono-writes-stuff.tumblr.com) on Tumblr. I post updates about progress and related things on there.


End file.
